Travel

I will be flying to India tonight and this journey means a lot to me. I know I am getting married this time but not sure who is the bride. Isn’t it funny? Yes, it is funny, strange, unavoidable and many more. This is how many marriages go through in India and I am also a part of it. Though I never got a bit of understanding from the traditional marriage but I have no other options as I see the other kind has many flip sides as well.

I went through the process for 3 years for finding a life partner but still quite not sure who owns the race. This is universally accepted that beauties are the beast but what you think? Are the ugly ones always remain good to you? Probably many do but not all. If you find a beautiful girl with all other good qualities then you are the fortunate person in this world.

I listen to all and have my own metrics to judge the best and worst. Put in my calculator to find the result but this is something where I am having tough time. I want to decide my bride with all the facts but here it is been done on hypothesis, data is really insufficient to compute and get a result. What will be my assumptions then? Any predictions done on insufficient data could prove me wrong. Now you can see me that I am totally lost and struggling to get my ways out. Lets see how it goes.

You must have heard about the famous temple of India called Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams where lord Balaji is worshiped, Balaji temple in greater Chicago is just a replica of that. This temple is in suburbs, Aurora is around 40 miles away from Chicago downtown and it takes around 1 hour to get there from Chicago downtown with moderate traffic.

Official website of Sri Venkateswara Swami temple is not that well designed or user friendly but if you spend some time on the site you will find lots of information about the lord Balaji. Here is also the address of the temple in-case you need it.
1145 Sullivan Rd
Aurora, IL 60506
(630) 844-2252

What I liked about the Chicago Venkateswara Balaji temple?

• This temple is far away from the main city and at a quite place.
• This temple is build by the richest community so Prasad is free to everyone, if you reach there then you are destined to get the Prasad not like other places where you have to buy every time.
• I love south Indian food and here it is available at low price. The quality of food is really good and affordable. I love to eat my lunch or dinner when I visit this temple.

What I didn’t like about Sri Venkateswara temple Chicago?

• Once the authority of the temple asked my friend to stay out as she was not in proper dress code. I don’t know why is it so, why someone will have to be in a temple in Chicago with a salwar suit but not with a jean on. I guess the committee might have valid reasons to that but I didn’t like it. My bad, this complain was for Chicago BAPS temple not for Balaji temple. Let me know if you have something which you don’t like about Chicago Venkateswara temple.

Let me know here if you liked or disliked something about this temple.

I visited BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (temple) many times, this is a beautiful temple near to Chicago land and only 35 miles from Downtown. To let you know this is a Desi temple and majority of the visitors are Hindu. All the major Hindu functions are celebrated here so this is a nice place to visit on special Indian occasions.

If you like to know about Indian culture, heritage, people, practice then please visit this mandir on a special function day so that you can enjoy the day and gain some knowledge.

What I like about BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (temple)

• Free food on special occasions, how can you hate this?
• The design of this mandir is stunning, the interiors are in wood and marvel carving which I loved the most.
• I love temple that practices silence and this is the one so I like it.
• Love to see lots of Desi crowd at one place and chat with them.

What I didn’t like about the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir

• The management people should speak in Hindi (national language of India) or English (international language), not in Gujurati (local language of Gujurat, India) at least.
• Still to find one more issue to add here. I found more complains now. (update: 10/16/2008)
• Girls don’t visit this temple wearing a sleeveless salwar, once the authority of this temple asked my friend to stay out because she was not in proper dress code that can be a jean and top but not a sleeveless salwar. This does surprises me.
• Married women can’t hold their husband’s hand and walk in the temple building, wow, what’s wrong in this? The guards shout when they see such things, I am shocked.

If you guys visited any great temple in North America then share with us what you liked and disliked about the place/management.

I am excited for my trip to San Francisco, I planned it differently but can’t deny the fate as well. I wanted to run for San Francisco marathon 2008 but this seems to be impossible now as I can’t run more than 3 miles due to my knee injury. I am not cancelling my flight ticket and finally visiting San Francisco for fun. I will try to update this post everyday while I am in San Francisco but in the meantime let me know if you know any places or restaurants where I should visit at least.

I know I promised to write something everyday so that you guys will know about the place and my where about but it seems to be impossible now. You all will have to wait till I go back to Chicago and update this post with some pictures of Golden Gate, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Old Fisherman’s Wharf, Bay Bridge, Yahoo, Nasa, Silicon Valley, etc.